Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source 2.3.1 Release

The latest version of Magento is here! Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source 2.3.1 was released yesterday, bringing updated security, performance, and functionality. In fact, these releases include over 200 functional fixes, over 500 pull requests from the community, and over 30 security enhancements. This latest version of the software aims to help merchants create superior shopping experiences and streamline operations. Read on to see what’s new with this release.

Magento 2.3.1 Functional Updates

The goal of Magento 2.3.1 is to empower merchants to act more quickly, operate more efficiently, and scale their business. One of the ways this release does this is through Page Builder, a drag-and-drop visual content editing tool that lets merchants customize content page layout without writing HTML or CSS. 

Page Builder

Page Builder, which is available on Magento Commerce only, provides merchants with a powerful set of content types to compose various types of pages. It enables merchants to:

• Easily create and edit engaging websites with rich content types to keep the experience fresh and interesting, encouraging repeat visits and high conversions.
• Take control over their brand and tell the story they want with customizable page layouts and intuitive drag-and-drop content management.
• Save time and resources to build and edit content in minutes with easier day-to-day operation and by removing dependencies on designers and developers.

But it’s not just Page Builder in this update. The Magento Commerce 2.3.1 Release Notes explain how the following enhancements will further improve the shopping experience on Magento.

Improved order creation workflow in the Admin

The Admin order creation workflow has been refactored to eliminate delays when editing billing and shipping addresses. Processing of these fields now happens only after they are populated.

Ability to upload PDP images without compression and downsizing

Merchants can now upload PDP images larger than 1920 x 1200 without first compressing and downsizing the images. Previously, when a merchant uploaded a high quality product image (larger than 1920 x 1200), Magento resized and compressed the image. Merchants can now set requirements for resizing and compression as well as compression quality and target width and height.

Inventory Management 1.1.0 (A community-developed feature!)

The Multi-Source Inventory (MSI) community project has added multiple new features to this release of Inventory Management:

• Support for Elasticsearch and Inventory Management
• Distance Priority Source Selection algorithm (SSA) option
• Enhancements to mass inventory transfers
• In-store pickup fulfillment option

Additional Updates

Along with many more enhancements, Magento 2.3.1 includes the following updates across the platform:

• B2B and hybrid businesses can now scale to support larger customers with address books 30 times larger.
• The latest version of PayPal Express Checkout which introduces a modernized checkout flow, faster checkout performance, and new payment options – including Venmo and PayPal Credit – in a single integration that does not require updating as new payment methods become available.
• Updates to the latest payment and shipping APIs to ensure a bulletproof operation and major improvements to the GraphQL API that increase coverage, improve the developer experience, and enhance security.
• Over 200 improvements to overall product quality, performance, and security.

There are also updates to a number of extensions, including Magento shipping.

Magento Shipping Updates

Magento Shipping expanded global coverage to 37 countries via DHL Express, Fedex & UPS; giving merchants the ability to streamline multiple parts of the fulfillment value chain with multiple carriers all from the Magento Admin. Additional updates for Magento 2.3.1 include:

• Shipment Cancellation. You can now cancel a shipment that has not yet been dispatched by accessing the shipment and clicking Cancel Shipment.
• Portal Access via Magento. You can now access the Magento Shipping portal directly from Magento using the Magento Shipping credentials that are stored in your Magento instance.

Enhancements to existing Magento Shipping features include:

• Multiple improvements to the Shipment workflow user experience.
• Batch Processing. Error messaging and field validation has been added to the batch processing workflow. See xxx for a description of other enhancements to batch processing.
• Collection Points. Available Collection Points have been expanded to cater for both FedEx Hold at Locations and UPS Access Points.
• Significant user interface changes have been made to the list of locations displayed during checkout. Opening and closing hours are now included when provided by the carrier.
• Click & Collect. The list of Click & Collect locations in checkout has been brought in line with the new Collection Points list. For a description of the new Collection Points list, see xxx.
• Carrier Specific Packaging. Carrier-specific packaging has been added for FedEx. These packages will be available for selection during shipping if a FedEx carrier is configured.
• Qualification Experience. The three Qualification experiences (Ship to Address, Click & Collect, and Collection Points) have been restructured and are now available as outcomes in a single Qualification experience.
• We’ve closed scenarios that could allow for third-party code execution.
• Magento Cart Price Rules. Cart price rules can now be applied to Magento Shipping.
• We’ve added additional workflow capabilities during the dispatch process to cater for future carriers.

Magento 2.3.1 Performance Updates

One performance update found in 2.3.1 is that Magento now supports customer accounts with more than 3,000 addresses. It took multiple code enhancements to achieve this performance boost, including:

• Customer address handling has been rewritten with UI components that increase platform performance, which in turn streamlines the management of customers with 3000 and more addresses.
• Magento now displays the list of additional customer addresses contained in the storefront customer address book as a grid, which has improved performance for customers with many additional addresses associated with their accounts. 
• The shipping and billing data that a user enters during checkout now persists if the user interrupts checkout to continue shopping. Previously, checkout data was deleted after a cart update.

Magento 2.3.1 Security Updates

This release includes over 30 security enhancements that help close cross-site scripting, arbitrary code execution, and sensitive data disclosure vulnerabilities as well as other security issues. No confirmed attacks related to these issues have occurred to date, however, certain vulnerabilities can potentially be exploited to access customer information or take over administrator sessions. Check out the full report on these security enhancements in the Magento Security Center.